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Afghan children play near the debris of a damaged house after a drone crash on the day before in Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011.

I think most critics of the Obama administration fail to point out its worst flaws, settling for gripes about Obama’s reading list or bemoaning the lack of a public option. Matt Yglesias, oddly enough, calls Obama’s greatest sin his nomination oversights. This seems bizarrely technocratic to me. Maybe it’s tongue-in-cheek.

Meanwhile critics to the right of Obama have laid out many, far more ludicrous complaints. We know all of these by now: that he is un-American, un-patriotic, a socialist, a Keynesian (or was it Kenyan? I forget.) In any case, plenty and plenty of complaints about lots of things that make progressives of the ‘professional left’ variety smirk. They think Obama is a rightwinger in sheep’s clothing, or at best a moderate far to the right of anything they’d like to see.

Let me hazard that Obama’s greatest sin is no technicality, no missing nominations to this or that department of the federal government; nor is it any perceived socialism or stealth rightwing agenda. Obama’s greatest sin is his failure to bring about an end to the wars.

In Iraq, whatever troop draw downs have occurred have been coupled with increases in private military contractors. Replacing American troops with government contracted for-profit troops (we used to call these mercenaries) does not mean we’re actually getting out of Iraq.

Along with NATO, the Obama administration launched yet another expensive and destabilizing war, this time in Libya.

The Obama administration has other shortcomings of course. It has chosen not to defend DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, but continues to enforce it, placing the lives of many Americans in a state of limbo on the very status of the legality of their marriage and sometimes their citizenship. Gitmo is still open. But the wars are the big issue.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if we weighed Obama against many of his up-and-coming GOP rivals we could probably have a healthy debate about the lesser of two evils. But this is a pretty damning list for a president who campaigned on hope and change.

The war on drugs is an expensive exercise in futility. Our engagements in Iraq and elsewhere are only a few years old. Their costs are still sinking in, still materializing. The war on drugs, on the other hand, has lasted 40 years. We should have learned by now that it is no laughing matter.